


Still Hurting

by geekyjez



Series: Isii Lavellan [50]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dreaming, F/M, Post-Relationship, Post-breakup, Sad, The Fade, the dread wolf - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3262205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekyjez/pseuds/geekyjez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Solas x Lavellan) Set after the ending of Inquisition. Lavellan tries to cope with the aftermath and the strange visions that haunt her in the Fade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Hurting

He was slipping past the trees, always moments from disappearing from sight. She chased after him, stumbling, calling out for him to stop. The forests of her home felt foreign to her here in the Fade. She knew this was a dream, but she could not stop herself. He wasn’t even real, but she kept following, desperate for the mage to turn and face her. She couldn’t let him get away. _Please, vhenan. Don’t do this to me again._ Her foot snagged on a root and she fell, grunting and cursing, scraping her skin against the rough forest floor. Her eyes were scanning the distance ahead even before she lifted herself. He was gone. A brief flicker of movement at her flank brushed into view and she knew that the Wolf had found her again.

It was always there now, each time she slept, no matter where her dreams took her. Pale fur touched with cream and gold. Dark strips of leather draped from its neck. Six narrow blue eyes, pinched in the inner corners. Always watching her intently. The giant wolf never bore its teeth, never stalked too closely. Night after night, she would shift to glance at it and the beast would recede. It lingered in the periphery of her vision as it slipped through her dreams.It was her shadow, the thing that made her breaths tight. 

She stood, panting from her imaginary run, stilling herself, daring to turn her head. Tonight, the Wolf did not retreat. Her eyes met the creature’s and her heart raced, objecting with fear. The tenuous threads that held together her dream worried themselves loose. The forests of the Free Marches faded from view. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Simply her and the Dread Wolf.

She awoke with a start, shuddering. Her Keeper’s warnings flooded her consciousness. _Seeing Fen’Harel in your dreams is a bad omen. He is the Lord of Tricksters, the Bringer of Nightmares. He who betrayed the Gods and howled with delight at the fall of Arlathan._ To see him repeatedly meant he was stalking her as his prey, waiting for her to be vulnerable to his bloodthirsty games. The Keeper would tell her now to be wary. Dangerous times lay ahead. The god was laying a trap for her.

Perhaps this was another thing the Dalish had gotten wrong. Isn’t that what Solas had told her, again and again? The Dalish were like children, scrambling blindly to put together a history of gods they knew nothing of? She rolled over, curling her knees to her belly. Such thoughts made her feel hollow. She had come to Haven so sure of herself, of her people, her beliefs. Solas had robbed her of that. Filled her with doubt. Whittled away her faith until she was even willing to let him remove her vallaslin.

He had not forced her. She knew that. But she wondered if she would have made a different choice, knowing its outcome. She felt naked without her markings, exposed and without a clan. The painful hours of silent sacrifice as the Keeper gave her the blood writing, marking her entrance into womanhood and her dedication to her gods— it was all gone with a wave of his hand. She could not look at her reflection without thinking of that night. Of the look on his face when he saw her dark unmarked skin, the way the corner of his lips pulled. His gaze was appreciative, glowing with his adoration. And then…

She rose from bed, padding the familiar path down the stairwell. The main hall was silent. A guard lingered by the fireplace, now reduced to embers. He did not hear her as she entered, nor as she slipped into Solas’s study.

No. Not his anymore. He had abandoned it along with everything else in Skyhold.

She closed the doors behind her softly, creeping without sound up the ladder and onto the scaffold. The bottle she had hidden away remained unmoved. She curled up on the wooden planks, uncorking and taking a swig. This was becoming a habit she did not want to admit to. She knew she was picking at the wound by being here, yet she could not bear to lie alone in her bed. Being near the few things he’d left behind, in the room he had covered in murals depicting her triumphs, was both torturous and comforting.

_You promised me an explanation, lethallin. After we finished our battles, after the day was won and the God-Pretender was slain. You promised._

She was pained to think of the last time she had been in this room with him. She lost herself to her anger over his rejection and channeled it into her violence. She refused to take him on missions, avoiding him when at the hold, finding excuses to leave. She wandered the Western Approach, knowing there were plenty of Venatori and Darkspawn to slaughter. For once, she was seeking combat rather than simply fighting out of necessity. Each bolt of lightning from her staff shot a tight pain in her chest and she threw herself into battle to make herself forget. She did not take the calculated and cautious ranged shots she normally did. She charged ahead, allowed enemies to get too close, took hits she didn’t need to. Somehow, it felt good to bleed. It felt better to remember what it was like to hunt, to stalk and kill and dance along the edge of savagery. That was what he thought of the Dalish, was it not? If she was to be a savage, then she would revel in it.

Her teammates could tell something was wrong and the quiet air that hung between them made her seethe. She had brought them along because she thought they would make her feel better. Sera, Bull and Dorian struggled to take anything seriously on most of their missions together. When Bull calmly suggested that she might want to change her tactics, she snapped at him with such ferocity that the towering pillar of a man was cowed into silence. The apology she choked out convinced no one. It was Dorian, the traitor, who told Solas of her behavior upon their return. The Tevinter set her up to speak with the elf, ambushed her with concerned grins and apologetic looks and abandoned her to glower into that calm face that set her teeth on edge.

Solas had told her that her immaturity was going to get her killed, that this was not the way to handle her feelings. She said such horrible things to him then, a pent-up torrent spilling forth. She called him a coward and a liar, told him he should have just paid some woman to show him affection rather than make her think he loved her. His eyes were filled with such pity as she screamed that it made her genuinely hate him in that moment. She couldn’t even recall what he had said next, only that it lit and overwhelming fire in her. She slapped him, hard. The sudden shock on his face quickly dissolved into a reserved sadness.

_“That may be what I deserve, but it will not make you feel better, lethallan. You need to let go of your anger.”_

Those were the last words he said to her before she stormed out of his study. She had been angry then, but it was a small fraction of what she felt now. How could she not hate him for disappearing, for throwing her away so carelessly?

He didn’t even say goodbye.

She could hear the subtle creak of the ladder, the soft padding of worn leather shoes. She knew he would come to her eventually. Her nightly vigils must have been a beacon calling out to him. She looked away as the brim of his hat appeared over the edge of the scaffold. Cole quietly settled in next to her.

“He wanted to stay.” He whispered after a measured pause. She didn’t respond, staring at the mural. Wolves howling at the seeing eye of the Inquisition. “Pain. Regret. So much regret. He has so much to be sorry for. Too many mistakes. Beyond the glass, they are no longer safe. It was never meant to be like this. He was him and more than him. He wanted to tell you. But then, your face as you learned the truth. What would come after. He wouldn’t allow you to follow him, no matter how badly he wanted to. The way he imagined it frightened him.”

She closed her eyes, her chest tight. “Please don’t.”

Cole’s fingers twitched together as he picked nervously at his gloves. “I want to make things better.”

“It would be better if he were here to tell me. Not you.”

“Wait. Let me try again.” Cole said, anxiously kneeling next to her. “He loved you. More than anything in this world or the next, in the many worlds he’s crossed, beyond mirrors and veils and across the ages. I know how he felt up until the moment he left. It caused him pain to see that he hurt you. Above all things, he could not forgive himself for that.”

Her sinuses stung, her eyes threatening to water. She tightened the mask she’d worn these past few weeks, the hardened reserve she’d been performing for the others. “Cole. Stop.”

“No. There has to be a way. This is what I do. I make the pain stop. I help people.”

She took a steady breath, looking at him. The young man was agitated, squirming uncomfortably on his perch beside her. She reached out, resting a reassuring hand on his arm. He looked surprised. Confused. Physical contact was still not something he was used to. He was waiting for her to speak. She did not know what to say. “You do help me, Cole. Just not like this.” His head tilted, one eye peeking at her from under the brim of his hat. “Please. I just need to be alone right now.”

His head lowered, hiding his crestfallen look from view. She hoped he understood. He allowed himself to disappear then until nothing remained but the faint, fading glimmer of the Fade.

She sat alone once more, the firelight from the torches making the shadows twist and dance around the edges of the room. She retraced her time since the conclave through the murals he had made for her, feeling as if there should be some clue hidden inside. Something to help her understand what he truly thought he was doing there. Did he know in the beginning how this would all end? He had always had a note of hesitation with her, made comments on how things would end in tragedy. She thought he was just being pessimistic about the immortal would-be god and the giant hole in the sky – understandable reasons to doubt that you could have any kind of future. But no. There had to have been something else. Something he had never told her.

She did not fight sleep when it came to her again, even knowing how the wooden planks would make her body ache when she woke. Every time she sank back into the Fade, she held the brief hope that he would be there. She had asked him once to show her how to visit the dreams of others. He had given her a puzzled smile, as if he found it endearing when she spoke of things she could not begin to comprehend. He told her it was not something he could teach. She wished now that she had pressed him further, gotten that gift from him. She wanted so desperately to seek out his mind, lingering somewhere out there in the Fade. Instead she closed her eyes, praying that each time she went to sleep that he would be there. That he would finally visit her dreams again.

She was in her quarters, in her bed. She knew the shape of the figure that stood on her balcony and she rushed forward, her heart lifting. He had come to her. Finally, he had—

It was only a shade. A shadow. A part of her dream that dissipated as soon as she stepped out onto the cold stone. She could see moments, memories flooding into her mind, assaulting her on all fronts. The way he smiled against her lips each time she kissed him. Mornings waking beside him in the dim light that crept through their tent. Long nights of intimate conversations, the pleasure he seemed to get from her inquiries about his travels. Dancing with him at Halamshiral. When Josephine had taught her the steps, she found the movements strange and stiff and foreign to her feet. Yet then, with him pulling her close, she could understand why the shems liked it so much. She could recall the scent of his skin, the taste of him. The feel of his fingers sinking into her hair. The touch of his lips on her throat. She could hear his voice now, echoes of the last time she saw him. _“No matter what comes, I want you to know that what we had was real.”_ The sun was setting over the edge of the mountains, peaking through the crest, just like the first time he…

She leaned against the door frame, shuddering hard. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to forget him, to simply embrace the part of her that hated him and let the rest go. Emotions were harder to control in the Fade and the restrictive mask she wore was crumbling away. She sank to the ground, shaking, unable to hold back the sobs she had tied up tightly within her chest. This was foolish. She was the Herald of a deity she did not even believe in, the blighted savior of Thedas. She could fight an ancient immortal magister and his army of demons but she could not stop being reduced to tears like a child over that stupid elf. She wanted to see him again, to scream at him and hit him, to kiss him and take him to bed, to hold onto him so tightly he could not abandon her again. More than anything, she wanted to know why.

She saw the Wolf again, in the corner of her eye. It lingered in the shadows beside her bed, a pale figure that stood larger than any of its kin on the physical plane. This was madness. She was being stalked in her dreams by a god that should not be real. She had given up her faith for him – one more thing that Solas had lied to her about. The gods were real. She knew that when she met Mythal. Yet she could no longer bring herself to believe as she had before. Her faith was broken, shattered, uncertain, constantly questioning. This could be a spirit or a demon, taking the shape of the Dread Wolf, trying to be something she would find fearful. Maybe it was her own mind tormenting her.

Or perhaps he was real and this was all a trap.

She turned to face it. This time she was not frightened. Her anger was her shield.

“I am your prey, is that it?” She snarled, pushing herself to her feet. The Dread Wolf’s head tilted to one side, the god’s eyes narrowing. “Come for me then and be done with it. I have torn down a man who would be a god. I do not fear you, Betrayer.” The wolf flinched, wincing back. She laughed bitterly. This was the trickster her people cowered at the thought of. The idea that he could be hurt by anything she said was ludicrous. Her, a mere mortal, unable to stop pathetically crying even as she mocked a god. “It is what you are, is it not? I know you, Fen’Harel. Traitor To All, He Who Hunts Alone.” The beast stood eerily still, watching her. Her fingertips itched to act, lightning cracking along the surface of her skin. “Come then. Try to break me if you dare, but I have no patience for games. Fight me. I have precious little else to lose.”

The wolf studied her. There was no movement. No lunge to strike or snarling teeth. Its features darkened, but it was not into the fearsome glare she expected. It looked hurt. Mournful. Piteous.

And then, she was alone.

She awoke, tears trailing along her temples and settling against her ears. She gave into them now, crying for the first time outside of the Fade. After all this madness had ended, after saving the world and suffering through the congratulations and celebrations, she had not let herself succumb to the ache within her.

This would pass.

She just needed time.

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first fic I wrote after completing DAI. It has been surreal to start at the ending and work my way backward through writing their relationship, that's for sure.


End file.
